Pearls and Swine

“Don't give that which is holy to the dogs, neither throw. your pearls before the pigs, lest perhaps they trample. them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. This well known verse, which has no parallel elsewhere in the New Testament, is a difficult one to interpret.

Start the process of figuring out what this saying is talking about, and, by doing so, we can learn how to decode what we are reading in such a way so as to gain "Power".

Grammatically we can reduce the sentence - that "Don't give that which is holy to the dogs" is used analogous to "neither throw your pearls before the pigs," so that each half of the image informs the other.

So we are talking about sharing holiness (wholeness) with those who would trample our generosity and destroy us - now that they are aware that we are possessed of any currency of value, in this case a knowledge more valuable than pearls. For reference on the value of pearls historically:

Tangentially, I was aware that pearls were the wedding-band adornment of choice prior to diamonds thanks to things I remember my mother saying. Along with my reading of the verse above that came into focus by the encouragement here to actually study pearls for the first time, I learned just how much she was right about pearls and weddings.

For that goes all the way back to ancient myth of Krishna and a pearl for his daughter Pandaí¯ on her wedding day.